Two Quick Links while I rest...
1. William Powers, a media critic for the National Journal, has a cogent critique on press coverage of swing voters. Under scrutiny, the assumptions underlying several reports appear simplistic and/or faulty.
2. EW has an interview with Moore. In the following exchange, he raises the curatin on press practices. In some ways, the war in Iraq, particularly the lead-up to the war, provides far more damning evidence against media than it does politicians, who, after all, come with cautionary labels. The EW interviewer asked where Moore got some of the footage in the film. People from the networks had some of the footage--they just didn't use it.
Is that where the footage of Bush after he addresses the nation on the golf course comes from?
Correct. Because a deal is made and this is what the deal is: Bush is on the golf course. So they allow a pool camera in only to film the statement he's going to give. Nothing before or after -- and if you do film [before or after] you're not to use it. And publicists from the White House will stand blocking the camera before the statement starts and then move right back in to block the camera when it's done. But by the summer of '02 the media had been so complicit in presenting a good face on Bush [that] his people had started to relax, because they knew that the media would censor themselves. And so, sure enough, on the night when that ran, ''A message to all terrorists!'', everyone had the rest of it and nobody ran it. Because of this implied agreement that we're going to protect each other, Bush feels comfortable enough making a crack like that. [''Now, watch this drive!''] It's like the Marine recruiters that we show? To do that we had to get permission from the Marine Corps. So we called Marine Corps headquarters and I don't even have to get to the point of saying this is Michael Moore's film, because they don't ask. They just make the assumption if media is calling saying they want to film some recruiters doing their job, well, that's a positive story!
10:34:04 AM 
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